Selling Land in Amber Valley

• Fields adjoining the towns or key villages outside the Green Belt, which policy H1 can support now.
• Plots, gardens and backland inside Belper, Ripley, Alfreton, Heanor or the key villages such as Duffield, Crich and Kilburn.
• Former works, yards and depots in the Green Belt around Belper, Heanor and Ripley.
• Larger holdings near Derby's western and northern edge, where the city's need is being planned for.
• Land within walking distance of Belper, Duffield, Alfreton or Langley Mill station.
• Farmland away from the settlements that could be put forward to the new plan.

For land headed for the new plan, the evidence the council will ask for, on access, drainage, ecology and landscape, is the work we pay for in full. Our option agreement fixes the price at the outset, higher than the land's present value, and you keep farming or letting it meanwhile. Should consent not come, you keep the land and pay us nothing. The agreement runs on for as long as an application or appeal is being decided.

• An outright sale. You sell the land as it stands today, privately or at auction. The price is what a buyer will pay for it without planning permission, and the buyer takes on everything that follows.
• A conditional contract. You agree a sale now, but it only completes if planning permission is granted. Until then you keep the land, and the agreement sets out who applies for permission and who pays.
• An option agreement, the route we use. We agree your price at the start, in writing, set above what your land is worth today. We then pay for and run all of the planning work, at our own cost and risk. If permission is granted, we complete the purchase and you receive the agreed price on completion. If it is not, you keep your land and owe nothing.

For land that needs planning permission before it is worth more, an option means you know your price before any work starts and never spend a penny on planning. The ways to sell land for development, compared sets out each route in full.

The council's summary of housing need and supply covers the five years from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2031 and is the first measured after the plan's adoption. It sets out the sum in plain terms:

That leaves a margin of 420 homes over the buffered requirement. Almost all of it rests on sites that already have permission: the plan's own allocations add only 42 homes in these five years.

A 20% Buffer That Says Nothing About Delivery

Elsewhere a 20% buffer is a penalty for building too slowly. Here it has another cause. The council applies it under the rule national policy has used for decisions since 1 July 2026, because its requirement was adopted within the last five years, was examined under a version of national policy older than December 2024, and is below 80% of the borough's need under the standard method. In other words, the buffer is there because the plan asks for so much less than the government's figure. Delivery at 173% would otherwise allow the smallest buffer of 5%.

The council's statement for 1 April 2025, measured while the plan was still at examination, used the same 434 homes a year with a 5% buffer and counted 3,370 homes against 2,279, or 7.39 years; the inspectors, working from the same figures, found well over seven years. Between the two statements the buffer rose from 5% to 20%, and large sites with permission fell from 2,769 homes to 2,441.

Why 434 and Not 424

The Derby housing market area statement of common ground, prepared mainly in autumn 2025 and signed for Amber Valley, Derby City, South Derbyshire and Derbyshire County councils, records Amber Valley's requirement as 424 homes a year, 7,632 over 2022 to 2040, including 1,320 for Derby. The inspectors' report explains the adopted figure. The plan as submitted asked for 6,564 homes from 2022. The inspectors used the updated standard method figure for 2024, 351 homes a year, and moved the start of the requirement to 2024, so that homes built earlier were not counted twice. Sixteen years at 351, plus 1,320 for Derby, comes to 434 a year after rounding, or 6,944 homes to 2040. The 424 is the same two parts spread over eighteen years from 2022: 351 for eighteen years plus 1,320, divided by eighteen, rounds to 424. On either figure the 3,024 homes clear five years.

Why the Comfortable Margin Is Not the Whole Story

The plan records that the December 2024 standard method lifted the borough's need from 351 to 615 homes a year, and the joint statement now gives 643. Because 434 is below 80% of that, the plan commits the council to a new plan under the new system. Put the council's 3,024 homes against 643 a year with only a 5% buffer, and five years would call for 3,376. The plan's yardstick stands until it is replaced or turns five in March 2031, so that sum does not apply today. National policy adds that while a council shows five years, buffer included, and passes the delivery test above 75%, a higher standard method figure is not in itself evidence of unmet need under policy S5 for five years from the plan's adoption. The sum does show how much more land the next plan will have to find.

If you are thinking of selling land in Amber Valley, that larger figure is the reason to look past today's comfortable supply: the next plan will need more sites than the last one, and it will favour land whose evidence is ready.

The Green Belt wraps Belper, Heanor and Ripley and reaches Alfreton's southern edge. The adopted plan makes one change to it, taking out a site off High Holborn Road at Codnor for two Gypsy and Traveller pitches; the inspectors deleted a proposal to take out the Denby Hall business park extension as well. Inside the Green Belt, policy SS8 grants permission only in line with national policy and the plan's other policies.

Policy H1: Homes Beside a Town or Village

The adopted plan draws no settlement boundaries. Its housing policies turn instead on the "built framework", which it defines as the limits of continuous or contiguous development forming the existing built-up area of a settlement. Inside that line, homes are permitted in the towns and key villages, and in more limited forms in the smaller villages. Beyond it, policy H1 also permits housing on land adjacent to the built framework of the four towns, the key villages and the borough's part of Derby, where all three of its tests are met:

• Proportionate. Its scale and character suit the settlement and its place in the hierarchy, allowing for other schemes and the landscape setting.
• Sustainable. It is within reach of services and facilities, or improves them.
• Serviced. There is enough infrastructure, existing or planned, to support it.

Policy H2 applies the same tests to land beside the smaller villages. The inspectors found this approach justified, and the plan counts on it: its supply includes 85 homes a year from small windfall sites, which the inspectors accepted partly because H1 and H2 are generally supportive of new housing within and next to settlements. None of this overrides the Green Belt, where policy SS8 and national policy still decide.

So the five-year supply matters less here than in many districts. Policy S5 of the national framework needs evidence of unmet need, and with delivery at 173% and a supply above five years that evidence is absent today, but H1 does not ask for it. A field that sits properly against a town or key village, outside the Green Belt, can be put forward now on the plan's own terms.

For an owner selling land for development on the edge of a town or key village here, the case therefore rests on the three tests of H1 (proportion, services and infrastructure) rather than on the council's supply figure.

Where the Green Belt Applies

Grey belt housing carries its own need test, usually met where supply falls below five years or the delivery test result drops under 75%, and neither is the case today. The routes that remain open in the Green Belt are narrower:

1. Inside the towns and villages. Gardens, plots and backland within Belper, Ripley, Alfreton, Heanor and the key villages come under national policy S4, so the council should say yes unless the harm from building there would substantially outweigh its benefits.
2. Old works and yards. Where lawful buildings or hard surfacing already stand, as on an old works, yard or depot, national Green Belt policy judges the site apart from open fields, and the supply figure plays no part. Farm buildings in agricultural use do not count.
3. Rural exception sites. Small affordable schemes that meet a proven local need, normally shown by a parish or village survey, which the plan expects on low value farmland.
4. The new plan. Open Green Belt fields will be decided through the 2026 to 2044 plan.

Our page on paddocks and small sites covers the smaller routes in more detail, and the grey belt guide explains the need test that grey belt housing has to meet.

Affordable Housing by Value Zone

Policy H5 sets affordable housing on schemes of ten or more homes by the value of each area: 40% in the rural parishes of the higher value zone, such as Crich, Kirk Langley, Quarndon and South Wingfield; 30% in the Belper area, which takes in Duffield, Denby, Holbrook and Kilburn; and 20% around Alfreton, Heanor and Ripley. Brownfield sites of 10 to 19 homes in the lower zone carry 10%. Close to Derby, the affordable homes may be shaped to the city's needs. A field outside Crich and one outside Heanor can therefore support very different schemes, and we allow for that from the first assessment.

The council's adoption statement records that the adopted plan includes every main modification recommended in the inspectors' report, published on 13 February 2026, along with minor changes made by the council, and that it now carries full weight in deciding planning applications. The development plan for the borough is the new Local Plan, the Derby and Derbyshire minerals and waste local plans, and neighbourhood plans, but only those neighbourhood plan policies that are in general conformity with the new Local Plan. Where land sits in a parish with a neighbourhood plan, we read each of its policies against the 2026 plan. Anyone aggrieved by the plan had six weeks from the day after adoption to apply to the High Court on legal or procedural grounds, a window that closed in mid-April 2026.

A 2044 Plan With a Spring 2027 Consultation

The adopted plan requires the council to prepare and submit a new plan under the new plan-making system, and to use it to address any unmet housing need in the Derby housing market area. The council gave notice on 19 June 2026 that it was starting the Amber Valley Local Plan 2026 to 2044 and ran a scoping consultation in July and August. It has said it will keep to its published timetable despite reorganisation. The stages ahead:

The spring 2027 consultation is the first stage at which the plan's proposed content and evidence go out for comment. Land with its evidence ready before then is in the strongest position. Each of those stages, and what the council wants from an owner at it, is explained in our guide to how land enters a local plan.

Land can still be put forward. The council ran a call for sites in spring 2026, with a forum for developers, landowners and agents on 30 March. Its land availability page says sites can be submitted at any time and will be assessed in the next yearly update, so a site suggestion form sent now still counts. The most recent assessment on the council's website dates from January 2024, so the next edition should show how the spring 2026 submissions were judged.

The Adopted Plan as the Yardstick, and When to Act

The council has issued a statement for each April from 2022 to 2026. While the adopted plan is under five years old its 434 homes remain the yardstick, so the margin in the next statement will turn mainly on how many permissions are granted and built. Delivery is tested again every year, and the current Housing Delivery Test 2025 was published on 17 August 2026. At 173% none of the test's consequences applies; a result below 95% would bring an action plan, and below 85% a 20% buffer for a second reason.

For timing, that sorts land four ways:

• Fields beside a town or key village outside the Green Belt can be judged against policy H1 now.
• Old yards, works and plots within the towns stand apart from the housing numbers and can be looked at now.
• Open fields away from settlements, and Green Belt land, are best prepared for the April 2027 consultation.
• Holdings near Derby sit where both the city's need and any future council boundary point, and are worth an early conversation.

The wider county picture, including Erewash and the Dales, is on our Derbyshire page.